All About Joan, Pt 3

Rhubarb
Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 2 Comments

9 years ago at almost exactly this time of year, I was in the next to last week of performances of my first out of town theatre gig. It had been an incredible experience, those three and a half months in Illinois. In-between the 1-1/2 day visits to Texas each week to spend time with my dying mother, the artist in me was thriving.

I love being in a show. Revolving my life around a production is my happiest, most organic way to function. I could write a whole other blog about that. But at this time of year, I am remembering the other part of that period of time in my life. The time I spent with my Mom at the end of her life.

That time with my Mom was many things. It was a time of healing for our relationship, first and foremost. We had some time to make up for. There had been some difficult years where I was scarcely home or in contact; years when it was tough between us. We both knew that this was our chance to right what we could. And we were both game.

It turned out to also be a time that would bring great healing to my soul. And a time of growing up.

(But I wouldn’t know that until much, much later.)

It was a deeply intimate time. My father was my mother’s primary caregiver. I was practically estranged from him at the time we were told that her cancer had come back as lung cancer, so it was uncomfortable being all together at first. We had been learning how to be around each other again through necessity, and on her behalf, since the diagnosis.

I cannot imagine any other circumstance that would have had me home again, under his roof, other than my mom’s illness. It is amazing how Life orchestrates Her lessons.

Both of my parents’ lives had narrowed down to one end: to sustain and prolong her life for as long as possible. My father was amazing in his capacity to be there and care for her. Watching how he loved her those months through the way he cared for her, and the heartbreak that he went through as he let go of the woman he had loved for 54 years, slowly began to change my long-ago-hardened perceptions of him.

Some people think love looks like what we see in romantic movies: someone bringing roses to your doorstep, a beautiful wedding, two people gazing into each others eyes saying the words “I love you.” While it can look like that, I learned what love really looks like: it was in the black three-ring binder my Dad kept on the center of the island in their kitchen, the room that had became our Ground Zero. It was a journal of my mom’s illness, filled with intricate, handwritten notes about her medications…times, dates, dosages. Hospital visits. Hospice caregiver notes. Bowel movements. Daily status updates written out by hand in great detail.

He had been a very successful businessman with a fierce will and iron determination, which he now turned to the most important job of his life, the job of Keeping Alive my mother.

(Some time after she died, as we were clearing away the things from her illness, I had a hard time letting go of That Binder. Page after page was a love letter to my Mom.)

On the days I was home, my father gave me a wide berth, allowing she and I time alone together. I am only now realizing how generous he was to give me that time with her. That’s love too.

Through the tension that lived between he and I, we found a way to work together those days I was visiting. It was a strange unspoken dance. We were an Odd Couple, but we were united on one thing: we both loved my mother desperately and were willing to do anything to help make her time better.

We’d try to come up with foods to go pick up or make that she might have some appetite for. Smoothies. Crackers with Pimiento Cheese Spread (a Southern thing that she had loved in her youth.) Did she have enough Sudoko books? (My mother’s greatest fear was that she’d get Alzheimer’s, as had her mother, and her mother’s mother. She did Sudoko’s like mad to try to stave off that Rapacious Host. Cancer beat Alzheimer’s to the punch. Maybe there was a blessing in there some where? Maybe.)

Somehow, I found out she’d never tried rhubarb. I am not sure why, but I became obsessed with the idea that she should not die without having tasted rhubarb. I didn’t say it out loud or anything. I just got it in me that I had to find some for her to taste.

While in Illinois, I found some locally made strawberry rhubarb jam (farm country!) and got a jar to bring to her. But when I got to Airport Security, they would not let me bring it through (Thanks 9-11.) I was devastated until I remembered that on the way from the Houston airport to my parents’ house, I would pass a House of Pies. As I made my way there, I I prayed that they’d have a rhubarb pie. They did.

I burst through the door, triumphant, bearing my prize for My Queen. But the pie would quickly be forgotten, shoved into the fridge with the many other containers of leftovers of food brought by many well-intended friends and neighbors. I would later throw it out, untouched.

Things had changed since the week before. My mom’s appetite had shifted again, and was not there for that weekend, nor for much of the time after that. Attention this particular weekend went to more important things, the main concern at hand – how to help her body to have a bowel movement again so that she could be out of the discomfort she was in.

I was devastated. Not that the pie was forgotten. But that somehow, I had missed the window. How could I be so stupid? There is a window — a window of time for a cancer patient when food is still a possible source of joy or appeal. I hadn’t realized that it would one day shut forever, sometimes quite suddenly. How could I not know that? I should have known. I had missed the portal into the alternate universe. The one where my Mom beat the odds and survived cancer. Getting her that rhubarb would have changed the trajectory of it all. Like in the movie Sliding Doors.

The mention of rhubarb to this day brings a burning flush of shame to my face and a failure pit in my gut.

The mind is an amazing thing. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking is so spot on.

In my thinking, it was as if somehow, if only I had gotten the rhubarb to her before That Window had closed, it would have made some crucial difference.  It would have made cancer slow down, or something. Anything.

As if rhubarb could have saved my mother.

Part 4 to come.

All About Joan, Pt 2

Bird plane
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As Mother’s Day approaches, I cannot help but think back to this time 9 years ago. I was in Illinois, doing a musical, finally living my dream.

I was also living a nightmare.

My mother was dying.

I was flying back each week on my off days to Texas to spend precious hours with her. This was not an uncomplicated process. The city I was in was fairly small. Though it had what they called an “International” airport (Hah!), I had to fly to Atlanta to get a connecting flight that would take me to Houston.

I’d fly out on the earliest possible flight on Monday morning, get to Houston around 12:30 PM or so, grab my carry-on, race off the plane and out of the terminal, catch the shuttle to get to the rental car place, get a rental car and drive the 40 minutes across town to my parents’ house. I could usually be in front of my Mom by 3 PM. I’d leave the earliest flight possible the next morning and do the same in reverse to get back just in time to go to the theatre for our first show of the week on Tuesday night. It was a lot of travel, but God, was it worth it.

Though my spirit and body was being fueled by every possible ounce of hope my heart could drum up, I still knew on some level that I had a limited amount of time left with my Mom. After all, she had lung cancer (this after having survived colon cancer) and had been through two rounds of radiation and two rounds of chemo only to be told that there was nothing else to be done. (Such is the way with that bastard, cancer.)

So any delay or problem with either flight heading to Houston was an agonizing torment.

It.Was.My.Worst.Fear.

There were more than a few times there were issues on those crucial flights to Houston. I recall most particularly one flight where the Atlanta-Houston flight was delayed. Then, after finally boarding, we were told that there was some issue with the plane – we had to get off again and await another. Oh, the rage and the desperation I felt!

I marched off that plane, demanding answers from Customer Service, operating in my Survival Mode – a steely cold exterior that surrounds a high-level swirling hysterical interior:

I had to get to Houston ASAP. What was the issue? How could they do this? What were they going to do to solve the problem any faster? What was their f’ing problem?

I don’t remember the reason they gave. They were not especially receptive, and in retrospect I understand why. My Survival Mode comes off as bitchy hysteria. I get it now. But then, it felt as if the whole world was just simply cruel.

After walking away in a mix of shocked shame and guilt at having gone into bitch mode publicly (shame and guilt at such out loud behavior being the response genetically engineered by my “good girl” Southern and Protestant-ly tinged upbringing), I burst into silent, hot-red fury tears.

I did eventually get to Houston that day. But I still want back those two or so hours that Air Trans cheated my Mom and me out of.

If there were issues on either flight heading back to Illinois, that was a different kind of hell. When you are a recovering perfectionist such as I, and a Betty-By-The-Book type of personality, it is simply not an option to not do a show.

Just.Not.An.Option.

Once, leaving Houston, I got to the airport to find that the weather in Atlanta was totally screwed up. No flights in or out there. I ended up buying a ticket on Delta leaving out of another Houston airport. I cried in silent outrage in a taxi to the other airport, flew to Chicago, rented a car and drove at unlawful speeds the hour and half drive back to the city to get to the theatre by call. I made it, too.

Hell hath no fury like a daughter grieved.

 

Part 3 to come.

All About Joan, Pt 1

lone bird
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Mothers Day is coming. I have so many lovely friends in my life right now who are new mothers, so it is on my radar.

I always feel funky this time of year, despite the gorgeousness of the Spring weather and flowers and budding trees.

At this time exactly 9 years ago, I was doing a musical in Illinois — my first out of town theatre booking, a very exciting time for me. (I came back to acting later in life after almost two decades of drifting. Started singing again in 1995, and then performing in cabaret, which eventually led me to acting again in 2004. I started to pursue it professionally in 2006. In 2007, I booked a fun role in a musical and was thrilled to drive across country to live in Illinois for three months to do it.

And I was decimated. I had auditioned for the show in early January, just after returning home from the Christmas holiday in Texas, where I am from. The holiday where my parents told my two brothers and I that my mother’s oncologist had told them weeks before that there was no longer anything they could do for her in the way of treatment.

I returned to NYC in a kind of shock and almost didn’t even go to that audition. But being a consummate people-pleaser and a professional, I went, despite feeling way off. So I was surprised when I was offered the role. Surprise turned into elation, which then turned into a kind of dread.

How could I possibly take the job under the circumstances? We had been told that no one could know how long my mother had to live. We, of course, were filled with a kind of hope that only those who have been in such situations can know. A kind of hope that your loved one was going to be the one to beat the odds. It could happen. No one can tell you it can’t. So you believe. You believe because that is what the human heart does. It hopes and believes.

But I wanted to be able to see as much of her as possible. My father was her primary caretaker. She was living at home, with hospice care available as needed to help manage her pain and as things progressed. Still, a part of me wanted to leave my Life, move down to Texas and move in with my parents.

My therapist advised me that I couldn’t just go down and “watch her die.” That I had to keep “doing my life.” I knew in my gut that she was right, but I was not going to just wait from afar, either.

I felt incredibly torn: to be living in this co-actualizing of my heart’s greatest dream and my heart’s greatest fear both at once.

With the help of my aforesaid therapist, Bev, I worked out a plan of action, and presented it to the production team to see if they would agree to make it a part of my contract’s terms. I explained the situation, and said that I’d need an understudy in case of an emergency. I also said that I would need to be sure that the days off of each week of the contract were to remain days off — that I would not be required to do additional shows or PR on those days — as I would be flying down to Texas each week and would not be available. Miraculously, they agreed to all of my terms.

I remember vividly the day I took off in my then-boyfriend’s Pathfinder to make the drive that would take me across many states. I was equal parts scared, lonely, excited and wondering. Was I doing the right thing? Was I making a horrible mistake?

By the time I got just outside of the city where I would be living and acting for the next three and a half months, I was filled with that same dread in my gut. As I was calling Bev to get help, a call came in from my Dad that my Mom had taken a turn for the worse. I think I even called the hospice nurse to try to get a handle on what was going on. It was a horrible evening. She gave me the impression that it would be days. I was ready to give my notice and get on the next flight, but Bev suggested I check in, get some sleep and revisit the decision in the morning.

The next day, I had a call from Mom saying that she was much better. The crisis had passed. She assured me that she was fine and that I should stay on. I would be seeing her in 5 days…So I uncertainly decided to stay…and take it a day at a time.

So began what was to be a life-changing experience…some incredible gifts and some deep sorrows came out of that time…as often happens with the losses of life…

Part 2 to follow.

Inside-Out

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I have been dealing with depression. Again. This is not a new phenomenon to me. I have been dealing with It all of my life, or at least as far back as I can recall. I call It depression in order to explain it to people. But I have come to understand it more and more as simply energy. Energy from my own system, energy that is mine and is not mine at the same time. It is an outcry. It is a soul strike.

This depression requires of me that I stay at home, alone, with only the company of my cat, Miracle. If I am out and about, and it hits, this depression demands of me to pull out of My Life and go home. If I am at home when it hits, It will not let me leave. There is literally a magnetic, heavy pull. A dragging down. An exhaustion like a huge, thick blanket on my body and in my heart. My belly is tense with a sheet of iron-like tension that I keep trying to release through awareness and breath. I get it to relax a moment, but as soon as my mind wanders, and I return to it, it is there again, hard and steely.

Its’ requirements? No outside interruption. No demands. No stressors. No people. Quiet. Solitude. Just me with all the me’s I have ever been. One or another of them needs my own attention and caring. Some part of me needs to be heard. To be seen. Sometimes, to be saved.

I fight It. It has been years that I have fought against hearing these inner needs, these lost parts of me. I used to use things to try to drown them out. To try to shut them up. They felt so overwhelming to me. I had no way of dealing with them, because I wasn’t capable. I had no core self from which to do such a thing from. I wasn’t grown up enough to mother anyone.

Over the last 11 years I have worked hard to grow myself up, to find my core self, to heal. In the last four years, I have worked hard to know all of my selves and their needs, to become more accepting of these times when my own system just shuts me down. It has been a painstakingly slow but incredibly crucial process.

Today I needed to write something hopeful, encouraging and acknowledging to my self. A combination gratitude and brag list, two practices that have been extremely helpful to me.

I am grateful:

For trusting my own process even when my spirit and body and soul parts feel disparate.

For my intelligence and my lack of knowing it all.

For my inner-knowing and my lack of intelligence.

For the parts of me that I think are ugly and mean and stupid: the “Loser” parts so quick to rise up within and flood my system – they are constantly looking for evidence in the outside world that will mirror back what it forcefully tells me – that I am fat, a loser, stupid, shy, weird, misshapen, disgusting.  These parts that bully me (as some bizarre kind of protection of some other very raw parts inside) – they are precious and worthy and are such important parts of me.

I celebrate them and brag about how wonderful they are in hopes that they will hear me and let my heart hold their pain and their shame so that new life can fill them with love and light. I say to them:

I am not shy. I am sometimes shy. How beautiful I am to feel that way sometimes.

I am not stupid. Sometimes I do not know things. Sometimes I do stupid things. I say, “Brava, Me!”

I am not fat. Sometimes I put on protection. Sometimes I fall into old ways of comforting myself. How human of me. What a vulnerability that proves that I have inside me. What soft crevices I contain that crave such filling. I love that about me.

I am not a loser. I am not ugly and weird looking. I am wondrous and epic and multi-faceted and one of a kind. I am me. I am my own shape. I am my own timbre. I am my own expression of the beauty and wonder of the world. Every single cell of me is a miracle and I celebrate the magical wonder that I was born into this world at this time in this form.

Today I dance with depression. Maybe tomorrow It will quiet down, and I can once again go back out onto the skinny branches, and live out loud again.

 

 

Beyond the Skinny Branches

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I am living life beyond the skinny branches. Or rather, that is my intention. I want so much to be the kind of bird that courageously leaps from the skinny branches off into the air, to soar into the unknown on a daily basis, in my art and in my personal life. That is my soul-craving. That is my heart’s fondest desire.

In reality, some days I’m clinging to the base of the tree for dear life. Some days I long to bury myself in the earth that holds the roots so that I may disappear and be seen no more.

Many days, I am comfortably uncomfortable as I sit on the medium-to-small branches that offer the safety and comfort of the known. But most days, more and more, I’m climbing out onto the skinny branches.

Any action I can take that feels as if I am living life beyond those skinny branches is a win in my book. So here I am. Challenging myself to be seen. To let my voice be heard. To take those leaps and both fly high and dive deep into the waters of life.

Care to join me?